Whatever one makes of the style of Obama’s campaign so far, there seems to be general agreement that he is outdistancing McCain on the organizational front. This, for example, from today’s Salon:

Using a combination of the information that supporters are volunteering, data the campaign is digging up on its own and powerful market research tools first developed for corporations, Obama’s staff has combined new online organizing with old-school methods of voter outreach to assemble a central database for hitting people with messages tailored as closely as possible to what they’re likely to want to hear. It’s an ambitious melding of corporate marketing and grassroots organizing that the Obama campaign sees as a key to winning this fall.

Salon observes: The sheer scale of [Obama’s] operation — because of Obama’s large network of supporters and heavy emphasis on field organizing — means the data can be sliced in ways that the Bush-Cheney campaign couldn’t have dreamed of in 2004.

All that data gathered in one place, Salon observes, may seem a little spooky, though the average credit card company already has it and then some.

How the Obama campaign feels about that comparison may be another matter.